It is a universal practice that before purchasing anything or starting a new venture, you always take expert opinion on the same. After years of working on multiple hybrid mobile app development platforms, we have discovered ways how Flutter developed by google has improved the world of hybrid mobile app development.
Mobile app developers have a tough time while creating mobile applications that need to run on multiple platforms as different code needs to be written to develop native apps. Hybrid mobile app is a possibility but what about the increasing demands of business houses to add a pinch of more features in their mobile app? Flutter comes into the picture right here!
Let’s get started with the basics first!
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a free and open source mobile SDK developed by Google to create Android and iOS mobile apps from the same code base. Flutter can also be considered a solution for creating cross platform apps with beautiful UI. Flutter’s designing views are similar to web applications, so many analogies to HTML/CSS can be found.
Flutter was initially introduced around 2017 by Google, but the buzz around Flutter mobile app development has increased lately.
As Flutter is comparatively new to the market, one of the questions arising around it is the platform on which the code for Flutter app development can be written?
The code for Flutter app is written on Flutter SDK along with any editor plugins. Some of the common editors are Android studio or IntelliJ. The advantages of using an editor is code completion, syntax highlighting, widget editing assistant, run and debug support and more.
Flutter has many features that can be interesting from a developer’s point of view. Here, in this article we will list down a few surprising things about Flutter. So, let’s begin!
Hot Reload in Flutter
Flutter’s hot reload feature helps you to quickly and easily experiment with the apps, build UIs, increase the number of features and fix bugs. Flutter’s hot reload works by putting the updated source code files in the running Dart Virtual Machine. After classes with new versions of fields and functions are updated, Flutter framework automatically rebuilds the widget tree, thus, allowing you to quickly view your changes.
Hot Reload feature in Flutter is a perfect combination of fast and smart! For instance, if you have some data displayed, UI can be changed during application run-time and if you use hot reload on the app - they’ll remain the same!
Set of Widgets
You might be wondering what makes Flutter app development so interesting?
Widgets are the answer here! Flutter has a rich catalog of inbuilt UI components. Basically there are two sets of widgets - Material Design (Android) and Cupertino (iOS). It’s all upon the developer to choose and implement whatever he wants in the process of Flutter app development.
And what’s the best part? You can implement every widget on every platform. If you choose to implement any of Material Design or Cupertino widget during the process of Flutter app development, it will appear similarly on every Android and iOS device. So, you don’t need to worry that the appearance will differ across devices if you opt for Flutter mobile app.
Everything’s a Widget in Flutter!
The core principle of Flutter is that everything is a widget. Be it app class, layout structure or any other basic function of the app, everything is a widget! Want your Flutter mobile app view to be centered? Wrap it with a center widget! Moreover, in the case of creating new widgets, instead of extending the existing widget class, you compose new widget with a collection of small widgets in Flutter.
All thanks to the widgets, process of creating UI in Flutter app development is as simple as composing layout with many individual small parts.
Different Themes - iOS/Android
Generally, we prefer that our Android application look different than our iOS app. Difference can be seen not only in the colors but also dimensions and style of widgets. Flutter can help you achieve this with its themes. After the theme is defined, it can be used within widgets. The material widget provided by Flutter will use the theme to set background colors and font for AppBars, checkboxes, buttons and more.
Without going further into any discussions or comparison of Flutter with other platforms, here are some pointers that will convince you to give Flutter a chance
Higher Productivity with Flutter - Flutter is cross platform, so the same code base can be used for developing your Android and iOS app. This will definitely save both time and resources for you.
Increased Performance due to Flutter - Flutter is all Dart. It compiles in native code and does not require access to OEM widgets, as Flutter has its own. Having its own widgets also means reduced mediated communication between the app and platform. Flutter can be considered the only mobile SDK that provides reactive views without JavaScript bridge. All these factors contribute to faster start-up time and lesser performance issues in Flutter mobile app.
Quick and Simple Flutter App Development - As we all know by now that one of the most appreciated features of Flutter app development is hot reload. It allows you to immediately view changes made in code on simulators,emulators and hardware. In less than a second’s time, the changed code is uploaded while the app is running eliminating the need for restart. Hot reload feature in Flutter is not great just for building UIs or adding features but also bug fixing.
When it comes to the simplicity level, Flutter’s documents claim that programming with it is so easy that no prior programming knowledge is required. Experience with object oriented programming language is helpful but even non programmers have done Flutter app development.
Compatibility of Flutter apps - In the case of Flutter app development process, the widgets are a part of the app instead of platform which makes it less likely to experience comparatively less or no compatibility issues with different iOS versions. Less compatibility issues means less time need to be spent on testing of the Flutter app.
Let’s Wrap it Up!
We hope that by now you know everything that’s required in Flutter app development. If someone puts forward a question to you about the reasons for choosing Flutter app development, you can sum it up in the following manner
- Flutter app development has advantages of reactive views without JavaScript bridge
- Flutter developer has full control over the widgets and layout
- Beautiful widgets of Flutter can be customized
- Amazing developer tools with hot reload
- Flutter is a stunning Debugging Tool
- Increased performance, capability and FUN while Flutter app development!
That’s all, thanks! Would you choose Flutter app development for your upcoming project? Visit www.kodytechnolab.com now! for Flutter services!
by Sanjay Kidecha
